And Then There Were Two
by Jimaine
Summary: Cassie and Tim are the last of their generation.


Disclaimer: These characters belong to DC, which is depressing because I'd take much better care of them.

A/N: This takes place after Infinite Crisis, so spoilers for anything and everything pre-OYL. I'm gonna warn y'all now, though, that I follow DC through the trades and this is based almost entirely on heresy I've picked up online. If there are details wrong, forgive me, because I don't know any better and have no access to a comic book store.

**And Then There Were Two**

Cassie watched the funeral from behind a sheet of water. There were tears in her eyes that she would not let fall, or at least which she could pretend to hold back. There were more than enough people here who lent her their shoulders to hide her face in.

When she arrived with Diana he was already standing there, though she and her mentor were early. Cassie could not bring herself to do more than collapse in a seat near the back, Diana next to her and others slowing filling in the spaces around her. Cissie took the seat on her other side, tears unashamedly flowing down her cheeks. Those left among the heroes after the Crisis filled out the rest of the seats, a sea of color and muted sorrow, both for the boy whose funeral this was and the other friends and family they'd lost. On the other side of the square of folding-chairs were most of the original Titans in a knot, Arsenal and Tempest and Donna and Nightwing. Donna and Arsenal looked like they were quietly herding Nightwing.

Rightly so, because Tim, in full Robin regalia, had been standing nearly motionless and entirely silent since before Nightwing arrived, since before she arrived, and he was not moving now. A ghost-silent Asian woman in a red shirt, who walked like strength restrained, took the only chair next to his. Donna did have to hold Nightwing back at that point. Tim didn't seem to notice, and the woman didn't seem to mind his silence.

Watching the funeral was like watching one of those time-lapse videos in science class, people moving around faster than the average human eye could track. She heard nothing, and people were reduced to faceless blurs. Amidst the sea of moving and grieving, only Tim was still. He sat when the others sat, back ramrod straight, and stood when everyone stood to go. Suddenly the grassy field was empty of almost everyone. Donna pulled Nightwing away and Diana left her there, with the lingering warmth of her hand on her shoulder. The chairs vanished in a blurred sweep as fuzzy workers retrieved them.

When time slowed back down, it was just her and Tim, standing in front of Kon's grave.

Donna would have gone to him, hugged him, would have said something to him. Donna would have offered words of comfort.

She was not the Wonder Girl that Donna was.

And Tim would not have accepted comfort.

Seeing the world through a veil of tears she still denied, Cassie walked to his side. He didn't move, not even to look at her, his eyes trained forward. This boy standing next to her had been through hell at her side, more times over than she cared to count. The one in the grave before them had been there as well, had been their strength. Their heart was lost somewhere in speed or time. They stood, alone together, as the sun moved across the sky and toward the horizon, unconscious of the stares two superheroes attracted.

_Take care of each other_, said Bart's voice in her head.

She reached out and took Tim's hand, threading her fingers through the gauntlet. She felt him move at last, the echo down his arm of his head turning to look at her. Cassie kept her eyes on the grave.

"We are still here."

She did not speak comfort. Anything but, when they had been abandoned by all their generation in one way or another. Cassie finally turned to meet Tim's eyes, the lenses in his mask retracted, and saw a simmering anger behind his grief that matched hers. The lasso at her hip thrummed an answer, and a shift in Tim's blue eyes told her he'd felt it too.

There was a cold strength in his eyes that was deeper than the anger and sharper than the grief, and it felt like looking into a mirror.

Boy or not, he was no child, and neither was she. They were warriors.

He swallowed, and nodded. "Yes."


End file.
